Emmanuel Tettey Mensah, best known as E. T. Mensah (1919, Accra

Accra

Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...

 – 1996) was a Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

ian highlife

Highlife

Highlife is a musical genre that originated in Ghana in the 1900s and spread to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other West African countries by 1920...

 musician.

He began as a flutist with the Accra Orchestra, a schoolchildren band, in 1930. In 1948 he formed "The Tempos", a group he might be best known for, and toured West Africa. The group gained international attention and in 1956 Mensah performed with Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

. The highlife style declined starting in the 1960s, but he remained active for years afterward.
He costarred on a highly successful album with the Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

n trumpeter Dr Victor Abimbola Olaiya

Victor Olaiya

Victor Abimbola Olaiya, or 'Dr Victor Olaiya', is a Nigerian trumpeter who plays in the Highlife style. He was possibly the biggest star in Nigeria in the 1950s and early 1960s, but received little recognition outside of Nigeria...

.